


Just let me be myself;That's all I ask of you.

by zephalien



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Dancing, Gender Identity, Impulse Control, M/M, Makeup, PTSD, Panic Attacks, first wives club, lesley gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-04
Updated: 2019-07-26
Packaged: 2020-06-09 15:56:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 2,498
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19479193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zephalien/pseuds/zephalien
Summary: Aziraphale is liberated from Heavenly scrutiny and suddenly loose and playful in a way Crowley isn't sure he knows how to handle.(They both have PTSD from their former employers.  This is the story of Crowley falling once again even though he thought there wasn't anywhere lower.)





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This first section is just panic symptoms but I do intend to explore trauma and PTSD as I go on and this should be read with that in mind.please be gentle with urselves

Bah Bah Bah Bah Bah Bah BAH BAH BAH BAHHHHH AND DON'T TELLL ME WHAT TO DO  
The loud music leaked into the hallways as he approached his flat. Once the door was opened, he could see that the space was empty for the most part, Aziraphale's off key singing intwined with the sound of water under the cacophany.  
Crowley left the groceries on the table (some wine and tea and a few strange snacks for Aziraphale to munch on) and approached the bathroom.  
He peeked in and Aziraphale noticed him instantly.  
Aziraphale's blinding gaze froze time, if only just for Crowley, and he looked completely happy in the moment. He had powders and colors smeared around his eyes and cheeks and he was wearing what looked to be a high waisted skirt under his regular shirt which hung off him unbuttoned.  
"Hello, you wily serpent." He said cheekily fidgeting with his bottles and potions.  
Crowley's eyes sparkled at the scene still wholely unable to move.  
"What do you think of this skirt? I wanted one similar to the movie but I'm not sure it suits me." He gestured vaguely at himself.  
"I... what movie?" Crowley said stupidly.  
Aziraphale grinned, "First wives club, have you seen it? It's really quite humorous."  
Just Let Me Be Myself, the song played on, Thats All I'd Like To Do  
The scene laid out before Crowley like the sweetest dream and that sweetness ripped through him at a speed faster than he'd ever moved in his long life. He shifted and pulled away and toward Aziraphale.  
"Come here, you silly old fool. You've made a mess of it." Crowley said in a rush.  
Aziraphale saw him coming, hands reaching for him, and his mouth curled into a grin.  
Fluidly and without any effort (and frankly before Crowley even clocked the trick being pulled) Aziraphale had spun Crowley and taken his hands in his own. They were suddenly close, closer than Crowley had meant to get at that moment.  
The moment before he understood was a swirl of Aziraphale and color and suddenly they were swaying and wobbling together around the room.  
It wasn't exactly dancing as neither had occassion to dance quite this way up until this precise moment but Aziraphale was feeling so full. Crowley was feeling lost. His eyes and brain were not catching up and he felt like he needed to breathe even though he knew that his body was automatic. He felt just like his car, something that should have been broken years ago and running on pure evil.  
Suddenly all the air in the room evaporated and he needed out.  
Suddenly Aziraphale stood alone. Crowley at the doorway with a lingering shouted explanation that he'd make some tea.  
~So just let me be myself  
~That's all I ask of you  
Aziraphale isn't sure what went wrong so suddenly.


	2. Trapped

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Extreme love and extreme abuse feel exactly the same when you are an abuse victim sometimes and you end up doing things that are messy and complicated.  
> Crowley is literally in the trenches of a ptsd panic attack in this chapter there isn't anything else. please read with caution.  
> anddd i think now might be the time to mention that this doesn't end badly for Crowley ultimately. I would never hurt him. He is only hurting himself here tbh.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> serious serious realistic portrayal of ptsd here yall please be cautious and hmu at my email zephalien@tutanota.com if u need anything . Stay safe.

He doesn't make tea.  
Honestly, he considers just leaving for a moment. He thinks he might just bolt from the apartment and holds his breathe. 1, 2, 3, 4-

Plants.

He can water the plants. They are his stress relief after all. If he ever needed relief, from stress of course, now would be the time.

Thankfully the plants were on the other side of the flat. Less so, though, was that once he got there he realized what he really needed. He needed to yell.   
Which was a problem.  
In his rush to move Aziraphale in and not lose track of him after the end, he'd completely forgotten to tell Aziraphale about his 'talking' to plants habit. He also didn't particularly want him to know.

As with most thing Crowley did, this decision came back to bite him with swiftness and severity.  
He tried to let go of that thought and just do some general gardening. He felt like maybe having something to do with his hands might calm him down. He busied himself adjusting soil and sorting some of his supplies and noticed his favorite plant needed a bit of pruning.  
He grabbed his pruning shears and went to work.  
He cut one small sprout off a branch that was crowd. Then another. Then another. Then he was tearing into the plants with his hands and he couldn't stop.  
Once the plant was sufficiently brutalized he stepped away to see what he had done.

He had ruined it.

The poor plant was twisted and bare and sad looking and it made something in him chafe. It was his favorite.  
How dare that fucking plant look like that? It shouldn't have needed pruning in the first place if he could just do things as he always had. He tried to change and he fucked everything up.  
The pressure twisted and boiled inside him and he suddenly couldn't bear it anymore.

"This is your fault!" He boomed, voice an unholy growl. "HOW HARD COULD IT BE TO GROW RIGHT YOU STUPID FUCKING IDIOT!"

His anger ignited and traveled through his veins until it was outside him as well. A demonic wheel of flame came bursting out from deep within the carefully tamped down swirling inside of him.

And all at once there was Aziraphale, looking exactly the same as Crowley had left him when he was standing alone in the bathroom.

"Crowley! Are you- Oh I thought-" Aziraphale glances around the room at a loss then shakes his head. "My love, are you okay? What happened?"

"I'll be back." He said weakly and practially ran from the room. It was embarrassing, not least of all because he wasn't an especially practiced runner. He liked to saunter and sway and wobble like the earth itself and otherwise he drove. He had no use for exercise or recreation with his demonic energy in this body. The result was stumbling and he crashed into the front door.  
He scrabbled and yanked it open before Aziraphale could see how much of a mess of everything he just couldn't stop making.

He stumbled down the hall in a haze and was, honestly, a little shocked when found the elevator. He stood in front of it miserably.  
The problem he had now was that as long as Aziraphale stayed, he couldn't possibly leave. He almost left him before and look what happened.  
Painfully. Agonizingly. He turned to go back to his apartment. Except he couldn't bring himself to turn the knob and after simply standing stupidly outside his own apartment he allowed himself to collapse on the carpeted hall next to his door.


	3. Tidy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Aziraphale has some quiet and cleans the apartment.  
> (nothing super heavy here besides the aching)

Ariraphale stood in the scorned* room which once held plants that Crowley valued above anything else in his physical reality.  
He didn't understand why Crowley was running from him. He didn't know if he was capable of easing or healing whatever wound it was in Crowley that made him do this.  
Azriaphale couldn't have told you whether Crowley loved him back the same way Aziraphale loved the demon, but he recognized pain and fear there.   
He stood for a while almost foolishly hoping that Crowley would come right back, say he was sorry for running, that he loved Aziraphale, and that, of course, they belonged together.  
You don't have an angel and a demon "fraternizing" (Aziraphale reminisced bitterly and more than a little guiltfully) for this long without something to keep pulling them back together.  
He wondered if Crowley didn't want him to stay. Perhaps the ending and unending of the world had made him feel strangely and it was a mistake.  
Aziraphale didn't know the answer but he allowed the growling aching to chew up his intestines rather ferociously.

He started with the remaining plants.

Any sprout and sprig that could be saved was given some angelic miracle and a lot of love and replanted in a clearer out pot. Aziraphale wiped away every bit of soot with a thought and looked around.  
He hadn't been in this room before, but he hoped things were at least somewhat in order.

He moved on to the bathroom and sorted out his new goods. The shapes and textures and colors that were exciting earlier (alongside his excitement to show his demon counterpart his efforts) now held almost no glimmer or color to him. They were simply human things he could sort to show Crowley something. What? He wasn't sure. He just wanted it to be easy and cleaned when Crowley returned, possibly it might comfort him. He let his mind wander to the idea that if Crowley wanted him to leave at least he wouldn't have left a mess for Crowley to deal with.

He ran out of things to do very quickly.

When you don't have human needs, you make less to tidy.   
The angel wished in vain for a moment to be like them. Their lives ended so quickly, he thought. They simply didn't have time to even create this yawning chasm inside him. Inside both of them.   
Crowley must feel it too.

He flops on the couch.  
He stares at a book, never turning a page or reading a sentence.  
In a futile effort, he even turned on the television, but he turned it off quickly when he saw the channel.

He gave up trying to find anything to do and had some wine and wandered the apartment alone. He hadn't really gotten the opportunity to do so yet. It seemed when he where he was that was where Crowley was too, even if he was just in the hallway. Crowley was this presence here and Aziraphale wondered again if he was uncomfortable with the sudden change in their living situation. He hoped it wasn't the cause, because, frankly, he liked living here. With Crowley.  
The only issue for him was that Crowley had left... and he didn't understand why.  
He could still sense him though strangely. As if he was standing just outside and waiting for Aziraphale to let him back in.

(*an: the word i intended to write here was scorched but sometimes out brains tell us what the real word was)


	4. The snake crawls on his belly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If you've stuck with this story so far you have recieved my warnings and now it's finally time to offer something different. I hope you find this as a soothing as it is to me. I hope the people that have remained for me when I wasn't able to love them properly know that I will never be able to thank them deeply enough for how much they've done for me. There are only a handful of them but they are such dear and precious people and this is 2000% about each one of them and the gift of patience (especially for people who go too fast).

He had gotten quite drunk sitting on his ass on the hall floor. No one would come down it anyway, he rationed. After all, they say this floor is haunted.

He laughed to himself at his own joke at human's expense. He wondered if Aziraphale would laugh or scold him for this particular one... then again... for any particular one. The thought was sharp and he released quickly.

It didn't matter really. Because here was he, sitting stupidly outside his own apartment. 

In there?

In there was an actual angel. One who hadn't done anything wrong. One who probably didn't understand how wrong-

He gasped quickly. It's too much. It's too many thoughts. The beautiful smile and the sounds and coming home. 

To. 

This.

It cut into him deeply and he ran.  
No, he corrected himself, he just broke his shit then collapsed in the hall like a moron.  
He groaned and let his head drop into his knees and became a silent ball of regret and pain.

Then the door yanked open 

and Aziraphale's head popped out, facing the other way.  
Crowley, in surprise, looked up suddenly and gasped. He regretted it instantly when Aziraphale looked toward him at the noise.  
"Oh!" Aziraphale said, shocked.  
Crowley felt like the moment pressing down on him. So, as usual, he said something moronic.  
"Pop goes the-"  
"Have you been here the whole time?" Aziraphale says bluntly.

Crowley swallows and specifically doesn't lie, "Yes."

Aziraphale's expression gets complicated and unreadable. He looks almost mad. Crowley tries to remember if he has ever looked mad before.  
"Quite right." Aziraphale says inscrutibly.  
Then he's gone.

The door is ajar.  
Crowley doesn't reach to close it. He does listen to the contents inside though.

There's noise and at one point it seems like Aziraphale is mumbling something. He listens for a long time and is still surprised when Aziraphale comes back. He's holding two cups of tea.

Crowley can't help but meet his gaze so disgustingly hopefully.

Aziraphale hands him one of the cups and as it passes from hand to hand he says,  
I'm still upset with you.  
-barely audible but so loud in the silence-

Crowley is surprised by this too.

Aziraphale moves and Crowley means to go back to wallowing but Aziraphale doesn't go far.  
There's noises and creaking somehow and then it's quiet. Quiet like an angel, reading a book.  
He leans around the door on his belly afraid to stand or talk.  
Aziraphale smiles from his chair but doesn't look up from the book he has perched on his lap.

It reminds Crowley of the beginning.  
He sits back into his curled comforting folded limbs in the hallway, but now it's.... something new.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if you feel like me please know that you will find people to love you if you look hard enough and wait for them and accept them as they are. (and try not to blame those who try and fail cruelly)
> 
> (https://soundcloud.com/yvgipdushb/coping-with-loss-of-self-tw)


	5. Its... a whole ass mess enjoy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is very emotive dialogue between Crowley and Aziraphale as Crowley sits outside the door and Aziraphale sits just inside pretending to read.  
> It takes place many hours later than the last chapter all of which was spent in silence.
> 
> (Serious warning on this chapter its very..... emotional but yall got this far so... you know)

-youre gonna hate me  
-ive known you for 6000 years  
-no you havent. not like this.  
-oh.

Ive hurt so many people  
You were made that way  
..  
It's over.  
I'm still.... me.  
You are. And nothing like you were.  
Oh.  
I think for me too though.  
Oh.

"Didn't realize it could feel this way", he said.  
What?  
Falling, he said gently, desperately.  
Oh.  
A flash of nervousness.  
Do you... understand?  
(Me) hanging unsaid.  
Yes, he responded willingly, of course  
it hurt the first time  
yes  
There was only Earth  
I know  
and it hurt  
"me too."

-what if i did the wrong thing  
-what if i did  
-you couldnt  
-nor could you my love

"im not sure if i can trust-" his voice cracked  
"Me?"  
"No. Not you. Never you."  
Then who?  
Me.  
Oh.  
Are you sure you should trust me though  
What  
I'm just the same  
Oh

~the snake slithering silently closer~

will it always feel this way?  
I'm not sure.  
You don't know?  
I've never...  
Never?  
Never.  
Oh.

Its hurts  
I know

it hurts.  
Me too.

~and closer~

I.  
You.

~an angel slips easily down to the ground~

I?  
You?

~one remains inside. one outside.~

I can't-  
You.... can't....  
No!  
No?

~They finally meet eyes~

I love you. The angel says.

(but it's not what needs to be said just now)

~the snake curls in on himself~

I'm not quick enough.  
I'm sorry.  
I'm so behind.  
So am I.  
Oh.

~they meet eyes once more~

{and now the angel struggles}

I.  
you?

~just an inch between them now~

I know. He says. Firmly.  
You do?  
Yes. I know you.  
I love you [relief]  
I love you [grace]

~and finally they meet and cling to each other fiercely and horribly~

Please?  
I love you.  
Please.  
I love you.  
Please?  
I love you.  
I love you.  
I love you.  
I won't leave (you)  
Me too.

~and just one kiss~  
{if a reader were so inclined one could imagine a night of clinging and knowing and being loved and loving together and so alone. 6000 reasons to stay apart and yet.  
And yet.}


	6. This is the end. I don't know what happens after this part.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I do not know shit or things yall.
> 
> Honestly I'm just trying to keep up lmao.

https://soundcloud.com/yvgipdushb/certain-instability-a-crowley-love-song

"Come Bid me do anything for thee."  
"As you hear of me so think of me."


End file.
